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Lucy Muellner (left) and Erin Fitzpatrick

Owners of North Fork's newest general store, Fork & Anchor

Photo: James Ryang

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Outside the new Fork & Anchor store, to open in September

Photo: James Ryang

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Assorted products available at Fork & Anchor

Photo: James Ryang

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Photo: James Ryang

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Photo: James Ryang

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Photo: Eve MacSweeney

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Falling somewhere between a cook’s paradise of organic farms and farm stands and the handful of (fairly pricey) restaurants whose ranks swell modestly each season, Long Island’s North Fork has a new kind of culinary destination. Along with the wildly popular food trucks, the time-honored general store is this year’s location of choice from which ambitious young foodies are launching their businesses.

Newest to the party are Fork & Anchor, a pair of Brooklyn transplants, Erin Fitzpatrick and Lucy Muellner, who are taking over East Marion’s Angel Country Store, built in 1860 and named for one of its former owners, Miss Angel. Respectively a sommelier/events planner and a fashion stylist turned chef, Fitzpatrick and Muellner, both 32, were drawn to the North Fork, for its landscape, which reminds them of childhood vacations in Nantucket and Brittany, and for its community of farmers and budding food-industry artisans with whom they will collaborate to offer what Fitzpatrick describes as “a mix of basic provisions and more exciting things” in the store. There will be “classic BLTs with really good juicy tomatoes sourced from the farmstand down the street” as well as exotic appetizers and prepared foods, and in winter, they plan a re-do inspired by informal food stops in Sonoma and Napa. Alongside 6:00 a.m. coffee and breakfast for the local workforce, Fork & Anchor will provide picnics to go, including such fresh delicacies as raw kale–and–beet salad and snap peas, mint and ricotta with lemon zest, as well as a box service of community-supported agriculture for weekenders driving out from the city. Redefining the convenience store, they’re even working with an industrial designer to create a picnic basket that can be flipped over and used as a tabletop—perfect for the beach.

Down the road in Orient, a historic jewel of a village beloved of artists, sailing enthusiasts, and city escapees, a couple in their mid-20s, Miriam Foster and Grayson Murphy, bought their own general store last spring just in time to ready themselves for the summer rush. (They do not plan to take a single day off until their weeklong honeymoon in September.) The pair, who had previously worked for businesses in the Berkshires—Murphy as a chocolate maker, Foster as a baker—were ready for their own project. Like Fitzpatrick and Muellner, they saw an opportunity to bring better food into North Fork’s grocery supplies, while taking care to provide the all-important local hangout space and not to change the status quo too dramatically—parts of the Orient Country Store date back to the eighteenth century. “We have to service everybody: Brooklynites, Manhattanites, local workers,” says Foster, who bakes up a storm and whose fiancé makes his own coleslaw and horseradish and eventually plans to smoke his own meats for the sandwiches. “It’s interesting, fun work. I like dealing with people and chatting and working the register,” she adds. “We’re having a blast!”

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Photo: Courtesy of the North Fork Oyster Co.

Of the area’s new restaurants, Dennis McDermott, formerly of Greenport’s The Frisky Oyster, has won raves for his new venture, The Riverhead Project, and Greenport’s North Fork Oyster Company, with a robust local menu and raw bar, has garnered a healthy following. But some of the biggest buzz is centered around a humbler venue: the Lunch Truck, a (stationary) 1950s Ford camper parked outside Southold’s exquisite North Fork Table & Inn and serving state-of-the-art lobster rolls, vegetable sandwiches, and pulled pork. It’s back to basics, but better.